Big Idea #2 of 3: Why Does Repudiation Feel So Good?
As the worldviews with which we are surrounded become primarily based on repudiation and outrage, it will require extra effort to ground our opinions and identities in more positive constructs.
Hi all,
Happy weekend from Kaneohe, HI! I’m finally reunited with MW, who just returned from an underway period and is home for a little while before the boat heads back out. I flew here from Charleston, where I finished prototype about two weeks ago, and then after MW leaves I’m headed to San Diego for a quick visit and then to Alaska to see my home for the first time in almost two years.
In a very odd turn of events, I received orders to the same Hawaii-based boat where MW is temporarily assigned right now, the USS MISSOURI (SSN-780). Husbands and wives aren’t allowed to serve on the same submarine, so in a few months we’ll swap out. I’m excited to join a crew I’ve already heard so many good things about, even though they’re definitely going to be disappointed with the downgrade from MW to me.
A word on prototype. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life, and certainly the most formative. It was like plebe year at the Naval Academy, in the sense that it was a completely new, demanding environment where I had no idea what was going on most of the time and learned mostly by trying things and making mistakes. It also required me to develop some mental competencies I hadn’t worked much before — like speaking for relatively long periods of time from memory — and some interpersonal skills, like taking lots of recommendations from senior enlisted folks (with years more experience than me) while retaining the ability to personally control and coordinate operations in a complex engineering facility. Some days were extremely stressful, and some were really rewarding. New recruits to the submarine force are usually warned about how unenjoyable prototype can be. I agree with the warning, but to any new recruits reading this, I’ll say that it is also a life experience you won’t get anywhere else. You learn a lot, not just about nuclear power, but about yourself and your ability to do some mentally difficult things under pressure.
I missed writing this newsletter last month — the time when I normally write it coincided with a particularly intense stretch of prototype . Going forward, I’ll try to keep up with it every month or two. But we’ll see.
Here’s part two of my summer series on these “big ideas” that have been on my mind. Like I said in June, it’s not like I think these are the biggest ideas of all time or the most defining ideas of my life. They’re just some interesting themes and patterns that I often find when I’m reading the news, observing current events, or generally trying to understand things.
This month I want to talk about repudiation, a.k.a. rejection or denunciation. I’ve been thinking about how good it feels to be “against” things, and how that good feeling shapes our worldviews, often decisively. I know there are many political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers who have dealt with this topic much more rigorously than I ever will, so I won’t pretend to be coming up with something original here. I’ll just share how this has played out in my own life.
Growing up, I was often struck by the fierceness with which my “tribe,” namely, outspoken members of the conservative Christian subculture I usually inhabited, opposed certain social and political trends. These hot-button topics might come up in online videos, recorded sermons, books, or later when Facebook became prevalent, social media posts. “The baby-killers” and “perverts” were hell-bent on destroying America with their “agenda,” these people said. We must stick to our values, remain uncorrupted by the world, and guard ourselves and our families against the liberalization overtaking society. Most of the times I was around these discussions, the language used was full of contempt, vitriol, and resentment. I participated in these discussions on occasion.
Eventually I started to find it odd that the audience for these discussions, books, and posts was usually fellow believers — and not the baby-killers and perverts themselves. The conversations didn’t seem directed in a way that would actually do any good. If, for example, we wanted fewer abortions in America, shouldn’t we be out “in the world” trying to persuade people not to have them, or trying to find out how to prevent the root causes? On other social and theological issues, shouldn’t we acknowledge the deep differences of opinion that already exist and try to find some common ground from which to start conversations? But to me, the rhetoric used by Christian proponents of conservative views never seemed like it would appeal to anyone who did not already agree with us.
Over time, I began to see that the discussions actually served a different purpose: to signal to one another that we are on the right “side,” to communicate that we are aligned together against evil people (and therefore morally superior to them), and to prove to ourselves that there are many like-minded fellow tribesmen out there with whom we can identify. This explained the regularity of the conversations and the liveliness with which they were undertaken, as well as the seemingly willful disregard for how they might be perceived by skeptical people.
Before I give the impression that this attitude fully represents the Christianity I grew up with — let me be clear that it was also within my conservative Christian tribe that I heard a better way. One of my earliest pastors, Dan Jarrell, made a remark in a sermon many years ago that always stuck with me: “religion is anti-sin. Christianity is pro-Jesus.” Similarly, the theologian Russell Moore often asks whether, as people who call ourselves conservatives, “we are holding fast to that which is good, or simply hoarding that which is comfortable?” Dr. Moore’s question refers to inter-generational preservation of the Gospel (re: Paul in Galatians 2), but one might apply the same query to contemporary political conservatism as well. What is the conservative movement actually trying to conserve? Comments like these forced me to think seriously about the difference between articulating a positive worldview — or a fully-formed vision of how things should ideally be — and simply rejecting or denouncing things we don’t like.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the tendency to identify and express oneself through repudiation and outrage is confined to the conservative evangelical circles I grew up in. Far from it. Being “against” things has, as sociologist Martin Gurri argues, become the primary and most efficient way we can unify groups of people and build politically or socially active coalitions. We all know from experience that it just feels good to condemn things, whether they be bad drivers on the commute to work, or “elite” politicians whose egos and out-of-touch policies we despise. When a leader can identify something that many people enjoy repudiating, he or she can create a following fairly quickly. Similarly, “negative polarization,” a phenomenon described in political science research, has been on the rise as members of each political party develop harsher and harsher views of the other party’s members. Anyone who has engaged even briefly in American politics in the last 20 years knows this is true.
Another fairly self-evident fact: the internet is making things worse. The news feed algorithms of popular social media sites like Facebook are known to amplify posts that trigger the most outrage — that is, the posts that inspire the most denunciation and repudiation towards people and things. The online news market, which rewards sites with the most clicks and fastest publishing speed, also incentivizes the publication of stories that rouse strong emotions — because that’s what we want to read. That means that those of us who spend a lot of time online or watching cable news perceive a world that is significantly more outrage-inducing than the real one.
As a result, it seems — I emphasize that it seems, because I haven’t studied this scientifically — that most of the political, and many of the religious, worldviews I encounter on social media or in conversations are grounded primarily on what kinds of things should be opposed, condemned, rejected, and repudiated. We must oppose critical race theory. We should defund the police. We must stop the spread of socialism. We need to find and cancel racists. We need to stop “woke” ideology. We must oppose masks. People who don’t get vaccinated are ignorant, selfish rubes. People who get vaccinated are ignorant, gullible sheep.
Another factor that makes this problem worse, I think, is loneliness. Like I mentioned above, it seems like coalescing around statements of repudiation is an effective way to identify with others, to figure out who thinks like us, and to build a sort of “community.” This is anecdotal, but most of the people I know who are in constant, deep community with others — like actual close friendship through church or other outlets — are not the same people who I see posting screeds online about random politicians who anger them. At the same time, I’ve found that I tend to get more worked up about outrageous things beyond my control when I’m spending a lot of time by myself or feeling untethered. There is a lot of real research out there about the negative civic effects of loneliness, so I won’t go into it much more here. But I’ve seen enough personally to believe those who say there is a correlation.
Last thing on this: I don’t think all repudiation is bad — many things are objectively terrible, and they need to be rejected and denounced forcefully. In the Galatians 2 passage that I linked to a few paragraphs ago, Paul the apostle is describing his confrontation with Peter, in which he “opposed him to his face” on a foundational theological matter. Nor am I opposed to strong, adversarial rhetoric when it serves a purpose. Many of the most powerful religious and political movements in history were founded on extravagant acts of repudiation. But unlike much of the outrage culture we currently indulge in, these acts of repudiation were also founded on deep-rooted, principled, positive beliefs about how things ought to be.
So here’s my big idea: modern society — in particular the large percentage of social interaction that occurs in online spaces — will continue leading us towards shallower, fear-based, condemnatory worldviews. As the worldviews with which we are surrounded become primarily based on repudiation and outrage, it will require extra effort to ground our opinions and identities in more positive constructs. I think that will look different for everyone, but the world needs people who can cast a positive vision and lead people towards it. It already has enough repudiators.
I’ll stop here before I say anything else causes someone unnecessary outrage! As always, I really appreciate you taking the time to read this, and would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
One more cool thing I’ll share with you is this photo from my reading group on Zoom. Some of you might know that last year I started a reading group on American social and political history for some Navy and Marine Corps junior officers. On the last Saturday in June, we had a super special guest, who shared some extremely motivating words with the group about keeping faith in America and staying focused on our warfighting roles as junior military leaders. See if you can spot him here.
If you’re a Navy/USMC JO (O-3 or below) and you’d like an invite to future meetings of this group, please let me know. We used to meet every month, but much like this newsletter, it’s probably not a commitment I can uphold once my sea tour starts in earnest. But we’ll still meet once in a while, even if other members have to take over leadership periodically.
Thanks for reading this newsletter and I’ll talk to you again soon!
Sincerely,
Thomas